How do austrians come to accept that many major inventions and leaps in technology in the last 50 years have been made by the government or military? I mean the development of computers, satellites and the internet have all been funded by governments.
If this wasn’t the case, do you think the market would have developed these technologies? Do you think we would be as advanced technologically as we are today if they weren’t funded by the government?
I mean, how long would it have taken to put a satellite in orbit around the earth if there wasn’t a space race? It may have been decades later. Are you now going to argue that government is always bad, when these examples clearly prove it isn’t?
but what incentive would there have been for a firm to initially develop space travel? All that research is far too costly. It needed the government to do it.
Similarly, what incentive would there have been for the private sector to have developed computers initially? These projects would maybe have generated long term revenue i.e. 40 years down the line, but a company which is only interested in short term profits would not have developed the computer in the 1940s or 1950s.
Why would a firm have built the first satellite or sent a man to the moon? They wouldn’t, because there is no profit to be made. Think about all the inventions and advances in technology that would therefore have been missed. How does the market respond to this?
So let me get this straight…your assertion is that a company in the 1940s or 50s wouldn’t be able to make any money from investments in computing technology until the 1980s or 90s. Is that what you’re suggesting? I’d like to be clear.
Again, I want to be clear. You’re asserting that inventions and advances in technology that there is a demand for only exist because money was forcibly taken from people to do things that (according to you) there wasn’t a demand for?
In other words, you’re claiming that there was no profit to be made in building satellite technology or visiting the moon…which by definiton means there is a lack of demand…which in turn means the resources put into it are not worth the value returned. That’s the definiton of “loss”…which is the opposite of “profit”. Your assertion is that doing those things (developing satellites and going to the moon) would have resulted in a loss for a private company…which again, by definition means those things are undesired uses of resources by the market. So you’re basically saying “it’s a good thing a small group of elites used the threat of force to take money from everyone to finance this project that the people didn’t want, because otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten done.”
My question to you is, why does the will of the elite few take precidence over the will of everyone else? Why should everyone be forced to pay for something they clearly (i.e. demonstrably) don’t want? I would be interested to hear your moral justification for this.
I suppose you might refer back to the unspecified “inventions and advances in technology” that supposedly came about as a result of this theft. But again I would ask you, if those things are so valuable…if those things are so in demand, what makes you think they wouldn’t have been invented? You just got through saying money had to be forcibly taken to finance space travel, because otherwise it wouldn’t have happened because it would be unprofitable (again, I’d love to see any proof of that claim)…but even taking your position and assuming space travel is something the market didn’t want, you’re claiming these “inventions and advances in technology” that came out of it are things people did want…as in they are profitable. So, why exactly would something that is profitable not be pursued?
I’ve never quite understood the value (other than the obvious Freudian implications of nations launching rockets toward space and periphery scientific benefits where new technologies utilized in aeronautics make their way out as more mundane private sector applications) of launching anything save satellites into space. A satellite you can get TV networks, spy data or the ability to shoot down ICBM’s with, but what’s the point of sending a man to the moon? It’s not even like the voyage of Columbus, where Spain was densely populated and wanted to grab any possible territory before it’s rivals did, and it’d be 100 times easier to establish an Icelandic metropolis in Antarctica than a hamlet on the moon. Let alone Mars: what the hell use are people going to do there when the same government sending them there is racking up debts big enough to stack the currency to the moon and back?
Before someone says it, overpopulation is a myth full of more bovine excrement than continental South America. You could comfortably fit the entire world’s population into an area the size of Northern Ireland, let alone the massive national parks and reserves the US has. On top of that, the birthrate is declining among Western Europeans, so the greenies and multicultis ought to be happy that the world’s going to be half-rid of Whitey. And by the time the United States becomes Estados Unidos de Americas, we’ll be able to build cities underwater. And make Siberia hospitable. It wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the vast areas of land arbitrarily claimed by governments and meted out to generously-bribing multinationals for cropland and the like, or to a lesser extent, the fanatical screechings of “anti-sprawl” campaigners and enviromentalcases.
The government is not responsible for the desktop computer. If you read up on the history of computers you will see that it was private organizations that have developed the computer and universities. The military used the computer technology and definitely contributed substantially to the development of computers. Military applications were the first the designated uses of computer technology. As they became more advanced and had more uses private organizations invested in their development. But to go as far as saying, if it was not for the government money (from taxation) being spent on development then they would never have been developed is just wrong. I would hope though at least, that the government does develop, as they take Trillions of money from the population and people should demand value for money. Instead the R&D of the government is very limited in comparison to the revenues of the government.
As for NASA and their contribution, $800 billion (not inflation adjusted) was the total budget since NASA inception. I would be interested in hearing exactly what me and you the consumer has benefited from that money. As often I get the appearance that I can thank NASA for my microwave, wd40, wireless internet etc. But I think they spent all the money on rockets.
The value of sending a man to the moon is defined by those who desire to go to the moon and are willing to pay for it. It would be just because they really want to go, or because its location is close to earth and they see some sort of oppurtunity.
The point is, nobody has placed a value on that besides the government as a form of dick waving to the Soviets, as technology increases and it becomes economically pheasible to send people to space for the purposes they desire, that’s when space travel will be developed.
The reason why nobody else can go to the moon is because the technology does exist, but it’s not economically pheasible. Let’s say, somebody can build a flying car. This flying car will cost 20 billion dollars to make right now, it will cost 20 thousand dollars in 2040. Should we make a flying car right now? Of course not. That’s exactly what the government has done, they made a rediculously overpriced flying car, and wasted a lot of money doing it.
But the initial costs of the space race would not have been a good business adventure for the private sector. Remember, the private sector have built upon decades of work by governments that would have been in no way profitable (where was the money to be made in launching sputnik or laika? into space).
Without WW2 and the Cold War, computer and other technologies would have been set back decades. Without that big waste of taxpayer money at CERN we wouldn’t have had the internet. The biggest demand for technological demand is the military and science. So, tell me, with no Cold War, with no funding of the space race or supercolliders, how would the market have done things more efficiently? Fact is it wouldnt.
I think you mean good business ‘venture’, and you’re wrong. They are good business ventures, obviously, you follow it by saying private companies make money off of those innovations now. The question is, were they good business ventures at the time? No, they weren’t.
They removing money from the private sector that would have been used otherwise, but you’re assuming that those technologies would never have been made.
Other people like to argue that technology works on a multiplier, and that innovations made by the government have sped up the growth of technology today and will in the future, exponentially. This is a better argument than the ones you’ve made.
I’d like to hear some responses to that.
Personally, I don’t see it happening. To me, it seems, that with better technology and a cheaper cost the work NASA has done in 40 years could have easily been done in half or even a quarter of the time. I’m having this argument right now actually, and I’d like to see opinions on that.
Sure it would of. After all in a free market you cant pollute other peoples air, so one of the best sollutions to this problem is helium 3 as an energy source. There is thought to be so much of it in the moon, so it would have been a great investment oppurtunity.
I’m going to restate the most important part of what I said, because evidently you missed it. (Even though someone else quoted for you as well)…
You’re basically saying “it’s a good thing a small group of elites used the threat of force to take money from everyone to finance this project that the people didn’t want, because otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten done.”
My question to you is, why does the will of the elite few take precidence over the will of everyone else? Why should everyone be forced to pay for something they clearly (i.e. demonstrably) don’t want? I would be interested to hear your moral justification for this.
So you’re basically saying “it’s a good thing a small group of elites used the threat of force to take money from everyone to finance this project that the people didn’t want, because otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten done.”
I don’t understand your point. There was demand from the military for this technology, and in the long run it has benefited everyone. How could there have been public demand for a product not yet invented, and when 99.999% of the population had yet to hear of such a device?
You’re trying to approach this from a moral point of view, probably because you realise that if there were no governmentr then this technology would not have been developed so quickly. So once again, in the absence of government, why would the private sector have developed satellites and invested so heavily in computers during WW2 and the Cold war?
Under what circumstances would you have seen the invention of the internet occurring without CERN? How many lost decades would we have had before the internet was invented? In fact, why did the private sector not invent such a communication earlier?
Firstly: This seems predominantly a question for anarchists, given that minarchists do not oppose the existence of a military and thus would have no quarrel with the benefits that research in that field brings.
Secondly: In response to your point regarding demand for nonexistant goods, why should government officials have any greater knowledge in anticipating public demand than the public itself, especially given the impossibly of true interpersonal cardinal-utility comparison? And how do you explain the private invention, development and distribution of the airplane and automobile? Were all such inventions copied from golden alien apples?
No, they probably wouldn’t have invested in them during the Cold War. They would have invested when it wasn’t a major money sink and when it would actually benefit mankind, instead of being used to spy on Russians.
Also the internet wasn’t a complex invention, LAN already existed and communication between computers was already happening on a fairly large scale before the arpanet was invented. I have no question government can do things “big”, they can waste a lot of money on things before they’re economically possible for the private sector.
That doesn’t mean the internet never would have been invented nor anything else. Read my flying car analogy. Of course the government can sink gigantic amounts of money into research while others can’t, most especially because it won’t mean any future profits. No profits mean nobody will buy it which in effect means it’s useless for the general public and only stands to serve the government at that particular time.
The time between the arpanet and the internet was the time required for it to become economically possible to provide such a service.
Also, I’m a computer programmer. I know how computers work. The internet wasn’t some unthoughtof thing that was unable to be accomplished, it was too expensive to develop at that time and the invention of arpanet didn’t change that.
Likewise space travel isn’t something nobody is thinking of right now, they know they can do it - eventually. The government has the luxury of completely wasting money that private entities do not have. Space travel would have happened in any scenario - government involvement or not.
You are correct that the only aspect of R&D that we realy see from the government, comes from its $100 billion’s military spending. But the American military is not responsible for many inventions.
What is an invention that no one uses? It is only when a private organization takes the jet engine and makes it available that it becomes useful. But people might say the military invented these products but that is not entirely correct.
Scientists around the world were already working on the invention of atomic energy before the military took an interest in its military application and due to the use military application the government ended up putting tight restrictions on its development. So it definitely was not a good thing that America has endless tax money to throw at the development of nuclear weapons.
the internet was invented by the RAND corporation and the first implementations of the network were at universities, not military bases. The military was very interested in the idea for its own purposes. But the involvement was not key to the invention.
Rand corporation (which is apparently a non-profit R&D arm of the us government dating back 60 years) was involved in the development of the first satellite.
After being rejected by the government “HOLLAND found sponsorship with the Fenians, a group of Irish revolutionaries, looking for a way to harass the British Navy. He built a small prototype submarine, “Holland No. 1” to test out his theories – including the use of a gasoline engine. The trial was successful enough to encourage building a larger, more warlike, boat.” http://www.submarine-history.com/NOVAtwo.htm
The rand corporation does in fact lay claim to the invention of the computer and the internet and satellites. But as other people have said if there was a market for those inventions then they would have been produced. Can you point out at any specific inventions that you think would never have been invented if the government was not spending its tax money through corporations like RAND? I am against unnecessary wars and massive government military spending. So even if out of the $100 billions of military spending, we do end up with some useful inventions, I still would not say that the world is better off because of that or that the rubber or GPS on my phone is worth all the destruction and wasteful spending that is the military.
